Maya from Crayon Data shortlisted for IBM challenge

Crayon Data, a new generation big data analytics company focused on simplifying the world’s choices, announced it has been selected as one of the top list of companies for the IBM’s Watson Mobile Developer Challenge.

The short list allows Crayon’s entry, the Maya Personal Choice Assistant, to compete for a chance to tap the power of Watson’s powerful cognitive computing capabilities.

“We are absolutely delighted Maya has made the top 25 of the Watson Mobile Developer Challenge. It validates our vision that big data can meaningfully simplify people’s choices as well as enhance enterprise business,” said Suresh Shankar, Founder of Crayon Data. “Today, people are flooded with choices on what to buy, where to holiday or just eat out, for instance. The choices have reached such numbers that it actually makes life difficult,” said Suresh Shankar. “We want to simplify those choices and help people make more confident decisions,” he said.

As explained in the announcement, Maya is a cross-category Personal Choice Assistant, designed to help users simplify choices for a range of activities across banking, retail, hospitality and telecom. Maya represents the quintessential features of a big data platform that makes the interactions between consumers and enterprises a more elegant experience.

And these decisions are mostly made digitally, on mobile devices. Research shows that peer recommendations are 10 times more trusted than sales people, 35 per cent of sales on Amazon are driven by recommendations, 75 per cent of what people watch on Netflix are recommendations and 27 per cent of all hotel bookings determined by recommendations on review sites, it added.